The military operation in Ukraine poses an immediate and growing threat to the lives and well-being of the country’s 7.5 million children. Humanitarian needs are multiplying – and spreading by the hour. Children are terrified, in shock, and desperate for safety. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the move, most of them women and children. Many families are becoming separated from their loved ones.
The past eight years of conflict have inflicted profound and lasting damage to children on both sides of the line of contact. In eastern Ukraine, where UNICEF and partners have worked for the past eight years, thousands have been without safe water due to damage to infrastructure. UNICEF is now scaling up humanitarian delivery in the east and expanding across the country as needed.
The children of Ukraine need peace, desperately, now.
How is UNICEF helping children and families in Ukraine?
UNICEF is working to scale up life-saving programmes for children. This includes:
- Ramping up efforts to meet critical and escalating needs for safe water, healthcare, education and protection.
- Prepositioning health, hygiene and emergency education supplies as close as possible to communities near the line of contact.
- Working with municipalities to ensure that there is immediate help for children and families in need.
- Supporting mobile teams providing psychosocial care to children traumatized by the chronic insecurity. Currently, UNICEF has 10 mobile teams operating in the east. These child protection case management mobile teams respond to violence, abuse, separation from family, gender-based violence, mental health and and disability cases.
- Continuing emergency response efforts to address the COVID-19 outbreak, including by working with municipalities to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates, and by strengthening awareness raising and capacity building efforts.
Source: UNICEF
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